I tell you, I've wanted nothing more than to honestly type out those four stars. It figures that it would come from a film that many saw last year, most saw before me, and has been in theaters for a few months. Spending such a long time away from intelligent cinema can be supremely alienating in a way, with nothing really to base reviews of other films off of. It's great practice in terms of forming your own identity as a film critic, away from the cattle of viewers who have no individual opinions because they try to think the way they believe they're supposed to think. Peer pressure and nonsense like that.
Wonderfully enough, the topic of impression and interpretation is entirely fitting for Certified Copy, a film whose plot can be read a multitude of ways. To give a bare bones plot description based on what trailers and such lead incoming viewers to believe, it all transpires across a lovely afternoon in Tuscany. A writer named James Miller, played by William Shimell, spends the day with a female French antiques dealer, played by Juliette Binoche. That's as empty and bare a plot as you can get, but Miller's latest book, which shares the same title as the film, speaks of how a copy of a work of art holds as much value as the original.
The film could just be these two individuals speaking on the topics of originality in art and within life, as well as other philosophical musings, and it still would've been a great film. However, writer-director Abbas Kiarostami does us one better, and has the two main characters play a game of sorts. As they travel throughout the day, people on the street begin to mistake them for a married couple, and as they play along with the insinuations, they seem to create a history and a dynamic between each other. This is where things become a bit tricky and far more captivating.
